EXPLORATION

Can you suggest to me a game with good land-exploration mechanics? Something that recreates in a fast way the thrills of "what's in the next hexagon?" I would fancy something in which players can still do something and not just passively get a result.

The Seafarers expansion to Settlers of Catan had a number of scenarios in which you build only half the board and as you build boats, you add hexes to the board blind and essentially explore in the way you mention.

Biggest problem was always that there were invariably too many water tiles and someone would spend the whole game building boats for no pay-off.

As Dralius mentions, you might have more luck getting a thorough answer at BGG. Seafarers is the only one I can think of off the top of my head.... so...

You can still go explore the forest behind your house knowing that there will be trees, certain animals, and certain types of plants along with the general topography. You wouldn't know where all of those might be found though.

Hero Quest was the first that came to mind for me. The board layout is generally the same for each dungeon you enter but sometimes a corridor or room is unaccessible and the doors/monsters/traps are almost never in the same spot. You know you are in a dungeon and that there are rooms, monsters, traps, treasure somewhere but you have to explore by 'looking' around to see where things are. So this would be a basic line of sight exploration.

Sounds like Seafareres better suits your bill with 'hexes' needing to be explored.

I think the issue you are going to run into is generating the map. If it is randomly generated such as Seafarers then some people may be wandering aimlessly because of bad tile flips. If it is pregenerated as is Hero Quest then you would need some way to reference the map without seeing what was still undiscovered.

I would really like to see/play more games that have a good exploration mechanic to them. Even online in games like WoW I just like to explore everything to see what's out there.